Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony from 1493 through 1898, at which time
it came under the control of the United States. Throughout the twentieth century, the
United States played a major role in all aspects of Puerto Rican life --- government,
economy, education, culture, etc.

There is considerable debate about what the relationship between Puerto
Rico and the United States should be. Politically, there are three major streams of
thought: national independence, statehood within the United States and the continuation of
the commonwealth status. This debate extends beyond the political realm to the cultural
one as well.

In Puerto Rico, television penetration is nearly universal (99%). Since
the population base is relatively small, Puerto Rico is not self-sufficient in terms of
television program production. Local productions are mainly news and variety entertainment
programs. Many of the television programs are imported, some of which are telenovelas
from Mexico and Venezuela but mostly programs from the United States.

On broadcast television, programs from the United States are usually
dubbed in Spanish. On cable television (which is present in 29% of all Puerto Rican
households), the situation is more complicated. Geographically, Puerto Rico is situated in
the footprints of satellites directed towards the United States. This means that Puerto
Rico cannot receive the Spanish-language satellite signals that are beamed towards Latin
America. Consequently, Puerto Rican cable television has mainly English-language channels
that were originally intended for United States audiences, such as the Discovery Channel,
USA Network, ESPN etc, but not their Spanish-language counterparts. Puerto Rican cable
households also receive the signals from US-based broadcast stations such as WABC
(New York City), WGN (Chicago), WNBC (New York City), WOR (New
York City), WPIX (New York City), WRAL (Raleigh), and WSBK
(Boston). The only Spanish-language channels are the ones such as GEMS Television and
Galavisión which operate inside the United States.

Irrespective of one's political beliefs, one can see why there is should
be concern over the impact of the overwhelming presence of the English-language U.S. mass
media on cable television in Puerto Rico. But how do consumers actually use and feel
towards cable television?

Los Medios y Mercados de Latinoamérica is an annual consumer
survey of the general population between the ages of 12 and 64 in 18 Latin American
countries and Puerto Rico. In 1996, we interviewed 450 respondents in Puerto Rico. We
asked these respondents how they watch English- and Spanish-language television programs
on a five point scale, where 1 means 'never' and 5 means 'frequently. In Table 1, we show
the percentages of persons who watched English-language and Spanish-language programs
'frequently'.

Within non-cable homes, the people receive mostly Spanish-language programs
(either original or dubbed) and therefore the frequency of watching English-language
programs is very low (7%) due to the lack of opportunity.

Within cable homes, we assume that these people subscribe to cable television in
order to watch the cable channels, which happen to be mostly in English (55% of them do so
frequently). So one consequence is that these people view the Spanish-language programs on
broadcast television less often (80%) than those without cable television (97%).

The issue of cultural impact is not merely a matter of language. It is also
about transculturation through a constant bombardment of images of lifestyles, customs,
and values from another country. We asked the respondents about their interests in
television programs that are produced in the United States, Puerto Rico and other Latin
American countries, using a five-point scale where 1 represents 'Not interested' and 5
represents 'Very interested'. We show the results in Table 2 below.

Table 2. Percentages of Persons 12-64 who are 'Very
Interested'
in programs from different countries by cable and non-cable homes

Persons
in Cable Homes

Persons
in Non-Cable Homes

All
Persons

Made in Puerto Rico

64%

77%

73%

Made in USA

54%

34%

40%

Made in other Latin America countries

22%

30%

28%

Again, people in cable television households become more interested in
television programs from the United States and less interested in Latin American programs,
whether Puerto Rican or not. Overall, though, people are still most interested in the
locally produced programs.

We acknowledge that our interest in this topic was
inspired by a reading of Nancy Morris's book, Puerto
Rico: Culture, Politics, and Identity. Praeger: Westport, CT 1995. Pages 141-144 of that book dealt with the
challenge of cable television to Puerto Rican identity, quoting in-depth interviews and
focus group comments. We have provided some quantitative information from the Los Medios y Mercados de Latinoamérica study as our contribution
towards this debate. This is a complex issue, and a debate that has gone on for nearly one
hundred years is not likely to be settled by any survey results.